Britney Saved My Life?
You're hardcore if you like Britney. Britney's hardcore.
What's that? Oh right. We do that a lot then.
Who's your Britney?
You're hardcore if you like Britney. Britney's hardcore.
What's that? Oh right. We do that a lot then.
Who's your Britney?
Received an instant message this morning: "This is ballsy, so I thought of you of course."
Thanks Jeff. :-) I think it's brilliant. Enough so that I'd like to take these folks to lunch at a local Ruby Tuesday the next time I'm in Charlotte. I give you BooneOakley's Home Page.
I spoke with Pam Deziel, VP of Marketing at Palm yesterday. We had a frank and positive conversation about what has transpired over the past couple days. She was understandably taken aback by the reaction to our situation. During the call, all enjoyed an airing of the grievances much like a typical family would enjoy during Festivus.
Whurley, Dan & I, the original predevcamp creators, have understood from the beginning that Palm has competing needs internally:
1) the need to build a brand and engage with external groups like predevcamp.
2) the need to protect state secrets in order to compete in a dog-eat-dog environment.
During the call, Pam made it clear that these internal forces were pushing heavily against each other. Additionally, her team is stressed and stretched thin given all that needs to be done to launch a successful product is such a high-profile manner.
With that being said, they understand that they are operating in an environment with some new rules. It would have been better for all if they didn't have to learn this via this very public trial-by-fire.
Everyone now has a better understanding about the reasons why folks made certain decisions, internal workings on each side, and some of the thought processes that led to these recent events. Additionally, new information was revealed to me on my recent call with Pam about the reason why the last meeting was canceled that would have possibly prevented this crisis if we were informed of it earlier.
Ironically, this new information was shared with me without an NDA in place and Pam didn't even ask me to keep it in confidence. Nevertheless, she can trust that I won't betray her and reveal the information that was probably the true concern of the parties at Palm who felt the need to have us sign the NDA in the first place and subsequently cancel the meeting they had with us.
With all that being said, the end result has been a more active, genuine, intelligent, and serious relationship between Palm and its independent developer community. Everyone wins!
Sure, some lawyers and publicists now have brand new ulcers, but the brand emerges stronger and the developer community, we hope, has a real partner in the race to compete effectively in the mobile application marketplace.
Palm isn't the first company to go through this and it certainly won't be the last. Microsoft has for years done a great job of managing all these competing issues with skill and finesse. Whether it's hosting community events like barcamp on their campus (as shown below) or supporting community events by participating (we counted over a dozen Microsoft employees at the last event we hosted, BarCamp Austin) Microsoft has found a way to encourage independent communities and foster strong relationships with influencers inside and outside the Microsoft ecosystem.
A local organizer of the North Texas Drupal User's Group, Jennifer Conley, commented to me yesterday about how impressed she was that Chris Koenig, Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, was at their meeting last week. Clearly a win for everyone and no more effort for Microsoft than simply showing up. What happened after he was there? She told me about it. She tells others about it. This is great buzz in action.
The worldwide movement Dan, whurley and I created under the preDevCamp banner is, by design, in tact and all local groups, as far as I can tell, are still planning their individual events. Dan Rumney, predevcamp co-founder, is now at the helm.
Pam Deziel, VP of Developer Marketing, responded on the Palm Developer Network blog this morning about the situation:
Read the whole post here: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/
Whurley and I are here to serve the community, not the corporation. When it became obvious that we needed to make a bold move to get Palm's attention on behalf of preDevCamp, we moved. Whether you agree with our tactics or not, Palm is seriously paying attention to you now. This is what we, as leaders of the preDevCamp movement, hoped to create in the beginning. It looks like we're here now.
Anyone want to talk to me about it personally, feel free to catch me on twitter http://twitter.com/giovanni, email at predevcamp(@)gallucci(dot)net or leave a comment on my original post http://blog.gallucci.net/2009/05/palm-doesnt-get-it.html
I'm thinking it's water under the bridge now. Nothing to see here. Go forth and develop. I'm going camping.
Photos by Giovanni Gallucci. Licensed under a creative commons share-alike. Use freely but give attribution to giovanni gallucci, social media ninja and link to http://gallucci.net
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